“I do sound wild,” admitted Jason, “but if you could have seen the poor thing’s face when she asked to see you—­Anne, she’ll be dead before morning.”  The big man’s glance was full of entreaty.

“But if she doesn’t know me, why on earth should she wish to see me,—­at such a time?” asked Anne, still more astonished.

Flounderingly Vandervelde tried to tell her.  A questionable girl, to whom Peter Champneys had been kind,—­she couldn’t exactly gather how.  Dying in a hospital, and before she went wishing to see Peter Champneys’s wife.

Peter Champneys’s wife, fortunately for herself, was still too near and close to the plain people to consider such a request an outrageous impertinence, to be refused as a matter of course.  The terrible power of money had not come to her soon enough to make her consider herself of different and better clay than her fellow mortals.  She wasn’t haughty.  The heart she was not supposed to possess stirred uncomfortably.  She looked at Vandervelde questioningly.

“You wish me to go?”

“I leave that to you entirely,” said he, uncomfortably.  “But,” he blurted, “I think it would be mighty decent of you.”

“I will go,” she said.

When they reached the hospital, the blonde person was with Gracie.  The blonde person had been crying, and it had not improved her appearance.  Her nose looked like a pink wedge driven into the white triangle of her face.  Screens had been placed around the bed.  A priest with a rosy, good-humored face was just leaving.

Gracie turned her too-large eyes upon Peter Champneys’s wife with a sort of unearthly intensity, and Anne Champneys looked down at her with a certain compassion.  Anne had a bourgeois sense of respectability, and she had involuntarily stiffened at sight of the blonde drab sitting by the bedside, staring at her with sodden eyes.  She hadn’t expected the blonde.  She ignored her and looked, instead, at Gracie.  One could be decently sorry for Gracie.

A faint frown puckered Gracie’s brows.  Her hand in the blonde person’s tightened its grasp.  After a moment she said gravely: 

“You came?”

“Yes,” said Anne, mechanically.  “I came.  You wished to see me?” Her tone was inquiring.

“I wanted to see if you was good enough—­for him,” said the gutter-candle, as if she were throwing a light into the secret places of Anne Champneys’s soul.  “You ain’t.  But you could be.”

Vandervelde had the horrid sensation as of walking in a nightmare.  He wished somebody in mercy would wake him up.

Anne’s brows came together.  She bent upon Gracie one of her long, straight, searching looks.

“Thank you—­for comin’,” murmured Gracie.  “You got a heart.”  Her eyelids flickered.

“I am glad I came, if it pleases you to see me,” said Anne.  “Is that all you wished to say to me!”

“I wanted to see—­if you was good enough for him,” murmured Gracie again.  “You ain’t.  But remember what I’m tellin’ you:  you could be.”  Her eyes closed.  She fell into a light slumber, holding the blonde person’s hand.  Vandervelde touched Anne on the arm, and they went out.